A Confession
At twenty-six years of age I returned to Petersburg after the war,
and met the writers. They received me as one of themselves and
flattered me. And before I had time to look round I had adopted the
views on life of the set of authors I had come among, and these views
completely obliterated all my former strivings to improve -- they
furnished a theory which justified the dissoluteness of my life.
The view of life of these people, my comrades in authorship, consisted
in this: that life in general goes on developing, and in this
development we -- men of thought -- have the chief part; and among men
of thought it is we -- artists and poets -- who have the greatest
influence. Our vocation is to teach mankind. And lest the simple
question should suggest itself: What do I know, and what can I teach?
it was explained in this theory that this need not be known, and that
the artist and poet teach unconsciously. I was considered an admirable
artist and poet, and therefore it was very natural for me to adopt this
theory. I, artist and poet, wrote and taught without myself knowing
what. For this I was paid money; I had excellent food, lodging, women,
and society; and I had fame, which showed that what I taught was very
good.
this faith in the meaning of poetry and in the development of life was
a religion, and I was one of its priests. To be its priest was very
pleasant and profitable. And I lived a considerable time in this faith
without doubting its validity. But in the second and still more in the
third year of this life I began to doubt the infallibility of this
religion and to examine it. My first cause of doubt was that I began to
notice that the priests of this religion were not all in accord among
themselves. Some said: We are the best and most useful teachers; we
teach what is needed, but the others teach wrongly. Others said: No! we
are the real teachers, and you teach wrongly. and they disputed,
quarrelled, abused, cheated, and tricked one another. There were also
many among us who did not care who was right and who was wrong, but
were simply bent on attaining their covetous aims by means of this
activity of ours. All this obliged me to doubt the validity of our
creed.
Moreover, having begun to doubt the truth of the authors' creed itself,
I also began to observe its priests more attentively, and I became
convinced that almost all the priests of that religion, the writers,
were immoral, and for the most part men of bad, worthless character,
much inferior to those whom I had met in my former dissipated and
military life; but they were self-confident and self-satisfied as only
those can be who are quite holy or who do not know what holiness is.
These people revolted me, I became revolting to myself, and I realized
that that faith was a fraud.
But strange to say, though I understood this fraud and renounced it,
yet I did not renounce the rank these people gave me: the rank of
artist, poet, and teacher. I naively imagined that I was a poet and
artist and could teach everybody without myself knowing what I was
teaching, and I acted accordingly.
From my intimacy with these men I acquired a new vice: abnormally
developed pride and an insane assurance that it was my vocation to
teach men, without knowing what.
To remember that time, and my own state of mind and that of those men
(though there are thousands like them today), is sad and terrible and
ludicrous, and arouses exactly the feeling one experiences in a lunatic
asylum.
We were all then convinced that it was necessary for us to speak,
write, and print as quickly as possible and as much as possible, and
that it was all wanted for the good of humanity. And thousands of us,
contradicting and abusing one another, all printed and wrote --
teaching others. And without noticing that we knew nothing, and that to
the simplest of life's questions: What is good and what is evil? we did
not know how to reply, we all talked at the same time, not listening to
one another, sometimes seconding and praising one another in order to
be seconded and praised in turn, sometimes getting angry with one
another -- just as in a lunatic asylum.